GP — Girls Ride Day
Hello wakeskate community (emphasis on community!) Not wakeskate elite club, but community, because that is what we are and should aim to be.
Yes, I am a girl and this is the “Girl’s Page,” but hear me out because what I have to say affects us all – girls and guys. In all sports, wakeskating included, there are two major categories in which progression occurs: 1) Progression of the athlete as an individual and 2) evolution and advancement of the sport as a whole. And these two forms of progression feed off of each other. It seems obvious that as individual athletes become better and better, they push and expand the sport. But it works the other way around too.
As wakeskaters, we’ve hit a gold mine, we’ve discovered something that relatively few people in this world know about, which is downright one of the raddest frickin sports on the planet. The thing is, unlike gold in a gold mine, there’s plenty of wakeskating to go around and the more we share our sport with other people the more we have to gain from it.
Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say you take your neighbor Sally and teach her to ride, well now Sally thinks wakeskating is even cooler than MTV. So she tells Jenny and Michelle that instead of sitting inside and watching the Hills all day that she’s taking them wakeskating. Next thing you know Jenny loves wakeskating so much that she dumps Bobby, the football star, and starts dating you, Mr. McShredface. Bobby realizes he’s on the wrong path so he buys himself a seadoo and now he’s a wakeskater too. Now look at what this has done for you.
Let’s say all the girls ask their parents for their very own wakeskates that year. That money goes to the board company which grows and in turn has more money to invest in sponsoring upcoming shredders like you, the reader! Maybe Bobby buys your old board off of you and now you can go get yourself a freshy – again money invested in the industry. And maybe all four of our new shredders buy themselves a cable pass. Now the cable park has got more money to spend on building new sliders for the whole community! Not to mention you’ve got one more dude you know with a seadoo to ride behind and a hottie wakeskater girlfriend. Didn’t that work out well?
Do you catch my drift? We all have more to gain by expanding our sport and getting more people involved. Not just because it brings more money into the sport, but also new ideas, new styles, and it diversifies and expands the competition forcing the sport to progress. That being said, women are a huge part of the population on this earth. In fact there are well over 3 billion of us. That’s a huge pool of potential wakeskaters. Why not tap that?
So here’s what I propose we do: Institute a Girl’s Ride Day. Whether it be once a week or once a month, organize the female riders in your area to get together on a regular basis and ride. You can do it on a boat or at your local cable park. For instance in Orlando we are starting a weekly girls ride day at OWC. Every Monday from 4 until closing we are getting all the girl shredders to meet up and ride cable together. Riding together is important because you can feed off of each other’s imaginations and skill to learn and improve. And guys- help us out here! If you have a boat, institute your own GRD and bring all the ladies out on your boat to catch a ride (what a great excuse to spend a day — just you and a boatload of girls!) Or come out to the cable and give us some pointers. I know I appreciate any advice I can get! As we enter the new year, let’s bring in a new era for wakeskating, an era of progression and growth, both as individuals and as a community.
